Oxfordshire Children and Families Care Service - Case Study
Who are Oxfordshire children’s and families care service?
Oxfordshire children’s families care service operates a domiciliary care registered service. The majority of their services are delivered in families’ homes but they also deliver work in-school and the community. Their services are split across four teams and are split regionally across the North, the South and the City of Oxford itself.
- Flexible response team – This team operates with children on child protection
- Parenting support team - This team typically works with children with behaviours that may be challenging
- Schools team – This team operates Monday to Friday to give children support within a school setting and sits within the behaviour support team
- Disabled children’s support workers – These support workers tend to be based in North, the city, Vale, and the West to provide care in children’s homes
How does the Oxfordshire children’s and families care service work?
Oxfordshire’s children’s and families care service provides children and families with support to help them overcome personal struggles, potential behavioural issues, and other problems. Their service varies from child to child depending on the child’s needs. For example some may need more support than others and the panel will then decide accordingly how to deliver their needs.
The service they deliver is flexible and children can both use the service for shorter and longer timeframes. The different response teams and support workers deliver support in both shorter and longer visits including; trips out, school services, and sometimes working nights, where appropriate.
What challenges did they experience delivering this service?
Due to the flexibility of the service and bespoke support for each child it was difficult to schedule the appropriate support when needed. Previously, they used software which had no ability to set pre-programmed visit schedules. So both scheduling and rostering the service was very time consuming and it became difficult to track any gaps in rotas. This also made it harder to see what wider services were doing to upkeep their duty of care.
A more efficient way to plan their service was needed so less time would be spent on admin and more time could be spent supporting children and their families.
What was the solution?
Oxfordshire children’s and families care service decided to work with us at Access and use our Access CM Software to help improve their scheduling, rostering, and day-to-day efficiency.
Access CM is a single solution for workforce management, digital care management, and business intelligence reporting software, which supports the delivery of care with a range of easy-to-use solutions. They were already using this software in their adult service provision and it looked like something that would benefit them in children domiciliary care too.
The software supports and helps to improve Oxfordshire’s children’s and families care service by:
- Improving the scheduling of their rotas
- Using mobile monitoring to keep staff up-to-date with all key information and to record their arrival and departure times of their visits
- Keep parents or family of children informed about visits
- Track the amount of support hours children have had delivered compared to their scheduled hours
- Use data to calculate pay more accurately by taking into consideration a variety of factors including mileage
What are the outcomes of using our Access CM software?
Oxfordshire children’s and families care service working with us at The Access Group has introduced many benefits:
1. Improved efficiency
Through using our domiciliary care software rostering and scheduling has become simple and effective for the various teams which work in Oxfordshire’s children’s and families care service. They now schedule visits 3 weeks in advance allowing them to set regular staffing patterns.
Using our software and our scheduling solution Oxfordshire children’s and families care service can visibly see holiday and gaps in rotas to easily identify where changes and amendments to rotas need to happen, to ensure all children get the best quality of care.
Using our mobile phone app allows staff members to have real-time rota’s on their phones so they can be aware of any changes as they happen. They can also see double-ups, visit notes, observations, and send messages. It has created an effective duty system to help see what and where wider services are working making it possible to borrow staff across the different teams when needed.
Through the mobile app staff attendance to visits can be tracked and monitored through the “tagging in and out” feature allowing the office to have real-time visibility and be alerted if someone hasn’t arrived on time.
This really speeds up the process by reducing the time spent organising rotas and allows the office to investigate in real-time if a support worker hasn’t arrived on time. For example, if a support worker never gets to their Friday 4pm meeting due to traffic, once investigated, the rota can be altered to allow more time for arrival. Also by having one live view of the rota it can make checking if the service can take on additional work even easier by being able to identify if any gaps are available.
Through using both our scheduling and mobile monitoring solutions Oxfordshire children’s and families care service have improved their efficiency in organising and implementing the day-to-day running of their service. Our solutions have allowed less time being spent on admin and more time spent delivering the best quality of care to the children and their families which they are supporting.
2. Keeping staff, parents and families of children more connected
Using our software allows the parents and families of the children to be more connected and feel more involved in the support being delivered to their children. It provides the ability to store both staff and family’s data all in one place, making it easier to find specific information when needed. Timetables and rotas are also shared directly to the parents and families so they can see in advance when and where the service will be delivered and by whom.
Our mobile monitoring solution and app provides all staff their own profile helping keep all staff and support workers connected. Through the app staff have access to log data which is then essential for meeting and progress updates. Additional notes can also be added to rotas and been seen by everyone. This is useful in ensuring support workers have all the essential information for a visit and that they have the right resources. For example, if there is any extra information support workers need to know the app will be there to inform them, such as whether the minibus is needed on a day trip or not.
From using our software and our solutions everyone involved in the support network of the child can be involved and know exactly what visits and what support is happening when and where. This way everyone can be fully prepared for home visits or day trips without implementing any extra stress on the child and or their families.
3. Made reporting outcomes easier
Through the tagging in and out feature in our mobile monitoring app the system can identify regular patterns of late arrivals and investigate further. Changing the rota in real-time is also useful when emergencies or unprecedented events take place, this means children are less likely to miss out on a visit if the support worker initially assigned to the visit can no longer attend. Instead, another support worker who is nearby or free can attend.
Our software allows Oxfordshire children’s and families care service to identify patterns in staff and families behaviours and can quickly see how many hours of support each child has had delivered to inform social workers and their families. The software records this information by comparing ‘hours we scheduled’ and ‘actual hours we have delivered’. By recording this information when a rota is significantly different to what the child is being delivered, reviews and discussions can take place to ensure the child’s needs are fully being met.
This is useful because it can highlight potential problems a lot earlier to allow changes to take place before it impacts the children being supported.
4. Improved the wages and payment process
Through our scheduling and monitoring solutions the process to pay staff is a lot easier.
Our CM Software allows Oxfordshire council to track the time and attendance of their support workers to quickly calculate accurate payrolls. Our software sets different rates for the different types of shifts and the different times support workers could be working, including night shifts. It calculates the mileage support workers have travelled as well as any other expenses to calculate their payroll correctly. The information is then exported into their payroll software.
This improves their efficiency by reducing the amount of time being spent by workers in the office calculating out each individual support workers pay each month. It helps reduce incorrect pay by human error as our software accurately calculates wages according to the information that has been inputted.
What feedback have support and care workers given about our care management software?
Overall both support and care workers are pleased with how our software has improved their day-to-day tasks. From asking them directly three key things have helped and impressed them the most:
- Being able to use the software and the app in remote locations even when no signal is available
- Being able to monitor and track the progress of children’s support irrespective of if they have recently been visited or not through viewing their recent visiting notes
- Always being able to evidence the work they have undertaken
Discover our Access CM software to see how our monitoring and scheduling solutions help improve the day-to-day running of your service. Learn how it makes real-time changes to rotas to inform all those involved about what care is being delivered when and where, and how risks can be flagged to ensure the best possible quality of care is always delivered.
